few feet ahead of them.

"Oh, Ruddy, I'm sure we're not on the right path any more," said Ann
at last. "Peter is so little--he never, never could have pushed his
way through here!"

"N-no," admitted Rudolf. "Perhaps he couldn't, but maybe he stuck to
the right path, Ann, and if he did he's there by this time."

"But I don't want him to get there!" poor Ann cried. "That would be
much worse for him than being lost. If he's just around the wood
somewhere we can find him and bring him back and then coax Sandy to
send us all home by the toboggan-slide to Aunt Jane, but if he's found
the Bad Dreams or they've found him--Oh, Ruddy, how do we know what
awful things they may be doing to him!"

"Don't be a goose, Ann," said Rudolf stoutly, though he was really
beginning to feel worried himself. "You know they are only dreams if
they _are_ bad. What can a dream do, anyway? They're not real."

"Oh, they're real enough," sighed little Ann. "Sometimes the things in
dreams are real-er than real things. I'm 'fraid enough of real cows,
but _they_ can't walk up-stairs like the dream cows can--and, oh, I
remember the dream I dreamed about the Dentist-man, after I had my
tooth pulled, the one father gave me the dollar for--and--"

"Bother!" said Rudolf. "I've had lots worse dreams than cows and
dentists. P'licemen and Indian chiefs, and--oh, heaps of things, and I
didn't really mind 'em, either, but then I'm braver than--"

"Sh!" interrupted Ann, stopping and catching at Rudolf's arm. "I hear
something--something queer. Listen!"

[Illustration: "I hear something--something queer."]

Rudolf listened. "I don't hear anything," he said at last. "What was
it like?"

"Oh, such a creepy, crawly sound, and--Oh, Ruddy--there is a face--see
it? A horrid little face peeping out at us from behind that tree!"

Rudolf saw the face too, a winking, blinking, leering, little face
much like the one that had grinned at Ann from the post of the big bed
not so very long ago.

All at once as the children looked about them, they began to see faces
everywhere, faces in the crotches of the trees, faces where the
branches crossed high above their heads, faces even in the undergrowth
about their feet. It reminded Rudolf of the puzzle pictures he and Ann
were so fond of studying where you have to look and look before you
can find the hidden people, but when once you have found them you
wonder how you could have been so stupid as not to have spied them